While mentioning the name AOL might bring a few chuckles and memories of the early days of the Internet, the service still exists and is oft used by many. A while back AOL partnered with Internet Radio service Slacker to ramp up the AOL music experience. The new site is fresh looking and offers the entire 10 million song Slacker library. In addition the new AOL Radio site features music news feeds that link out to other AOL pages.

Will AOL Radio be a threat to services like Pandora, iHeart Radio, or even Sirius XM? The simple answer is no. The service is quite nice, but how many people even know it exists? Even with some interesting marketing the service will not likely attract people away from their current listening preference en-masse.

Billboard calls the new look and feel of AOL Radio "a more mainstream version of Slacker". Make no mistake, AOL Radio is essentially Slacker, which makes it a tremendous product. As Internet Radio services go, Slacker is perhaps my favorite. The company produces playlists that are the best available.

So what does Slacker bring to AOL radio and their listeners? For starters, users will experience 50% fewer audio advertisements than in the past, and the user interface is much better. AOL Radio actually may feature even more than Slacker due to the fact that the service also boasts AOL-curated stations as well as Slacker staples such as ESPN Radio, comedy, and ABC News.

One main reason AOL Radio is not really a threat as yet is that it is just now becoming available as an app for smartphones. An iTunes app is already available and the company intends to release an Android based app in the coming months. Until AOL Radio can get into the smartphone market and gain a foothold there they will simply be relegated to the status of a niftty on line player. Slacker on the other hand could get a boost in revenues from the deal, and maybe even some much needed exposure as well.

8 Responses to “AOL Radio, Powered By Slacker, Re-Launches”

little off topic -sent email to ssg, guess you don’t use that anymore!

just want your thoughts on SiriusXM 2.0’s on-demand capabilities. Last call they said “We will continue to evolve our IP offerings by adding true on-demand capabilities for music and talk content early next year.” Do you believe SirusXM will offer full blown music on demand like Slacker, Spotify, MOG etc? I mean if Slacker did it (their service is amazing) I see no reason why we couldn’t. We currently have more than 2 million tracks on XM, 1 mil on Sirius… I know Slacker’s library exploded from 2 million tracks to 8 million after they offered music on-demand recently.

I believe it would complement the core service (like it did for Slacker), increase ARPU, create value when bundled w/ their talk on-demand. If music+talk on-demand is implemented correctly, getting all that from SiriusXM would be amazing. Add “personalization” that is coming next year, I see no reason for anyone to use Pandora or Slacker because SiriusXM will do it all! Thoughts?

Only problem in your scenario of increasing ARPU with all of these neat features that may or may not come is this: the music still sucks. Now, if you spend most of your time listening to the other channels, you don’t care about the music. If you’re like me and subscribed for the music, well, Sirius is in trouble.

I’ve been questioning how much money I give Sirius each month for a long time. I only spend about half of my time in the truck listening to SiriusXM, with the rest of my time going to Spotify and Pandora. It’s working perfectly and I’m very likely to drop the rest of my radios ahead of the price increase.

Yes, Sirius had a lot more music than Pandora, they just don’t play much of it on the channels that I listen to.

Spotify is over 13,000,000, Rdio and Mog each have over 12,000,000 tracks. I’m not really sure when, or if, Sirius will catch up with numbers like that. Aside from that, MLB sells an audio only subscription that provides home and away feeds. NFL has Audio Pass that streams home and away for every game. I have a few more apps on my phone than I used to, but that’s not a problem for me.

Music is the key for me and though there are some things I will miss about XM I’ve been using Spotify, Pandora, NFL 11, MLB At Bat and ESPN Radio app.

I’m saving a couple of bucks a month too, but thats not really what this is about.

Slacker caught up, from a library of 2mil to 8mil in short order. If SiriusXM wanted to they could do the same. The question is if it will be profitable. So far, nobody has made money on music on-demand. I believe Rhapsody has been doing it for a decade. But the smartphone has made music on-demand very attractive, so I think things are changing.

I use to believe in Satellite radio was the future, that was in 2005 when i first got xm radio. Push forward 6 years later my bill is now 45% higher a year then it was. With slacker and audible.com for O AND A, I’m saving myself over $250 a year. I dont think satellite can compete with ondemand entertainment.

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